Shake-A-Leg Miami (SALM) and Diveheart

By Kerry Gruson and Jordanna Heywood

It was such an obvious match of their message and mission. SALM is a universally accessible water sports center that seeks to achieve through sailing what Diveheart does underwater -- to enhance the lives and liberate the spirits of countless people of all ages and abilities. (www.shakealegmiami.org and www.diveheart.org)

It began with a chance encounter at a British Consulate event where SALM volunteer John Muir and I (Kerry) bumped into a long-time PR woman-about-Miami and old friend, Connie Crowther. Connie waxed eloquent about her passion for diving. I responded with tales of my love for sailing, letting the wind blow the boat along, as well as my dream to glide below the surface. It was all to become real with the arrival of Diveheart's president, Jim Elliott at SALM this January.

Our very first "open water" dive was a glorious 51 minutes on a sheltered reef. Captain Mick Nealy, our guide and boat pilot, fought through blustery winds and high chop to get us there. Captain Mick, founder of Tranquil Adventures, a Key Largo water sports adventure outfit with a difference, caters to the handicapped, rather than just letting them tag along.www.tranquiladventures.com

Experienced divers have promised us much more vivid colors, bigger corals, a much greater variety of sea anemones and fish on future trips. We all felt that the beauty of our first dive would be hard to surpass.

On this dive, we saw a large squadron of barracudas, oddly aligned in military formation, threateningly still; tiny enamel-blue fish; unlikely looking, formidably beaked parrotfish; sea-fans with brilliant purple roots; a perfectly clear jelly fish -- the whole undersea community in regular movement, ebbing and flowing to a single pulse, dancing to the same rhythm we could feel sucking us along and pushing us back. Every diver goes into similar rhapsodies, thus is the power of newly experiencing this wonderful, peaceful world.

There is a wildly contagious enthusiasm, shared by all divers, from our most experienced new friends, down to us, the novices. We feel we have entered not only a new underwater world, but a new family, bonded by a common love.

Several members of the Active Divers Association have joined the cause by becoming active in the disabled diving world. The ADA is a major dive club in South Florida. In addition to supporting our small group, (Jordanna Heywood, Kerry Gruson and Robert Rodriguez) it is opening up -- with SALM -- a world of friendship and association for disabled divers. www.activedivers.org

All through our journey we were happily surprised to find so many new friends, who gave so gladly of their time, resources, talents and hearts to our mission of becoming certified SCUBA divers.

Before the diving part of our adventure got underway, we went sailing with the graduates of the Diveheart HSA instructor/ buddy program at SALM. They discussed their thoughts about the program, and their experiences in diving and life, including some stories from our second Dive master-in-command Mike Kaufman that we are bound to keep in "darkest, deep confidence."

Connie, an ADA and Diveheart member, is exactly the type of mover-and-shaker to bring our dynamic group together. She was so excited for Kerry to be a diver, her energy carried us along. She was a reassuring presence on our first ever dive day.

Roy Wasson became an HSA buddy in the Diveheart course; he is another ADA member who helped us in many ways, from expertly crewing on the Whirlwind (Kerry's 34' SALM charge) to pitching in his family's dive gear.

We were thrilled to have our dive Sensei Jim Elliott captain a boat for the first time with us, and to teach him that there is no "jibbering" of any "shimbers" involved in sailing.

Chrisy Matthews was articulate about the meaning of the Diveheart experience. She is a physiotherapist who diversifies her practice by taking her patients horseback riding, and now, with her newly minted buddy certification, adds adaptive diving to the menu. She is the kind of supportive professional whose warmth and commitment allows the synthesis of friendship, adventure and therapy to happen. She says that she always focuses on the abilities of the children she treats; but now, because of the experiential nature of the Diveheart course, she has a better appreciation for the challenges involved in her patients' daily lives.

Diving is about conquering fears - of being underwater, not being able to breathe, of claustrophobia, predators and the unknown. The world is so afraid to let us do things. Freedom also has to mean the freedom to put yourself at risk; this is as true for disabled as for able bodied people. It is why diving offers such a feeling of psychological as well as physical freedom. Every victory on this battlefront, no matter how small, helps educate the world; even if unwittingly, it seeks to limit possibilities for people with disabilities.

We experienced a first hand example of this type of ignorance when dealing with the condo board at Kerry's building - they were too afraid, citing the liability issue, to let Kerry and friends have a private lesson by a (fully insured) Master Dive Instructor in the comfort of the heated pool of her home. We had to escape to the Florida Keys to complete our initial dives, where people are more attuned to the idea of freedom to choose one's own path. It turned out that our experience was much more complete for having done it all in one trip to this diving paradise.

The excitement for our first dive really started to build once we made a trip to Doug Austin's Dive Center in Kendall. Doug personally outfitted our trio with all of our remaining diving necessities. We were more than ready to go.

We stayed at Bill Gordon's house, as we always do in Key Largo, in the large rental apartment he and his family maintain for out-of-town guests and diving enthusiasts. Bill is another pioneer in the world of accessible SCUBA and other water adventures, as both a PADI and HSA certified dive master. Undeterred by the loss of a leg due to the explosion of a faulty dive tank, he is a major local promoter of accessible diving and tourism. www.admiralhsa.org

We prepared to take our first "confined water dives", with some apprehension, at Jules' Undersea Lodge. The site is located at the end of a mangrove channel to the ocean. The water, still in shadow on this chilly morn, looked dark and uninviting. But we found that as in life, sometimes it's best to just jump in. www.jul.com

After we went through some of the practice manoeuvres on one of the sunken platforms that acted as our shallow end, Jim took Robert and I (Jordanna) on a dive. The underwater motel that was the main feature of this odd little hideaway, and the vast column of bubbles from its air exchange system, gave me the feeling that we were diving a wreck that was still very much alive, and perhaps on an alien planet.

It had a sci-fi feel worthy of its namesake, Jules Verne. Other areas of the enclosure were sunlit and quiet, with the complex web of mangrove root life extending surprisingly deep in the water. It was quite murky, lots of particulates floating through the atmosphere -- a world of sepia colors, dark greens, ochres, browns.

Despite the cold we all managed to stay under for more than twenty minutes on all three of our dives. The water was 69 degrees on the surface, and at 20 feet under it felt like 60. For a skinny person such as Kerry, that is co-o-old.

Kerry: Life as a gimp is, in part, a balancing act between dependence and independence, the latter conceived as the most desirable. But independence comes at a price -- in terms of energy, time, and money. In the true story Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie Schwartz maintains that the inability to wipe his own butt means relinquishing control of his integrity. I disagree about the use of such benchmarks. For me, the most important factor is one's inner sense of autonomy; that is what determines your quality of life.

At one point in my life I had to make a decision about whether to continue trying to slowly, painfully motivate myself on foot with the help of crutches, or to move to another means of transport, i.e. a wheelchair. I decided it was no longer worth my time and effort to walk, when I could get around so much faster, easier and safer in a wheelchair. It gives me more time and energy to accomplish other goals. That is my equation; everybody has their own.

To these apparent losses, there is a bright side. As I am eventually forced to depend more heavily on the help of others, I am liberated by the realization that my friends want to help me, and in fact gain a certain satisfaction from doing so.

To have the independence to plan adventures for myself and go diving, I need to depend on a small group of specially trained individuals, those being my rescue diver/ instructor and an HSA buddy. Even though I have learned the procedures and protocols involved in diving, I am physically unable, by and large, to execute them myself. Therefore, while I can tell my partners how to rig my diving gear, I am leaving my life in their hands. However, by this calculation, I am left feeling more independent, not less. Making the independent decision to depend on and to trust others is a big part of the game of life. This is true for everybody.

Because independence has to be based on trust and Jim is so much the expert, he inspires such complete confidence that I never hesitated to trust myself to him underwater. This is a key part of Diveheart's success, but it is not a solo act. When Jim handed me over underwater to Mike Kaufman, I only noticed the exchange because Mike made the okay sign in front of my mask about three times as often as Jim, as Jim had in on our very first dive together. The other clue being that Mike is missing the tips off some of his fingers. Jim has managed to pass on this marvellous legacy of trust. Within, there is room for intelligence to grow: Mike did something that Jim had not thought of doing for me; that was to keep my legs horizontal and off the bottom by holding them between his own.

Robert is an exceedingly self-sufficient sailor/artist who is visually impaired. He is a true Renaissance man, and a dear friend.

Robert: Learning to dive gives me the freedom to plan new adventures. It allows me to see things I've never seen before. When you learn something new, there is always a feeling of accomplishment and boost to morale. It causes your mind to expand in different directions - I believe it makes you a better person. I feel sorry for people who never want to leave their comfort zone, who refuse to try new things.

It can be a challenge to your courage and your ego whenever you do something brand-new. My strategy is to play things on the safe side. I don't go into things with something to prove, and I don't assume that I know what to expect. I have a lot more fun that way. I haven't come across anything I won't try.

Diving is opening up all kinds of possibilities in my mind. It could take me travelling around the world, like sailing has. I might even try photography, which would let me take an old hobby in a new direction.

When I first learned to sail, I was heading for the pit of the abyss. SALM stirred me up inside. I felt liberated; it was big shift. Diveheart undoubtedly would have the same impact for someone in a similar place.

Jordanna: I met Kerry when I joined in on a friend's sailing lesson one day, and became a regular student. I felt my lessons were not just in how to sail, but how to function and assist in the disabled sports environment.

Diveheart for me is yet another great example of the positive impact adaptive sports can have on people's lives. Sports, done right, provide a sense of camaraderie, fun and accomplishment for all involved. This can be a powerful stimulus in the lives of people who have felt powerless. As a (temporarily) able-bodied person I have experienced this effect - indeed it is a daily struggle for all of us to achieve some degree of mental, physical and spiritual harmony. I firmly believe that opportunities should and can exist to allow even the most "disabled" person to access these benefits in any activity they'd like to try.

There are two qualities I've noticed in everyone we've met who is involved in adaptive sports. Number one is an unsparing capacity to share, much as though they were initiating a friend in an activity they enjoy. The other is a tendency, prevalent among good sailors, to find solutions, and consistently seek to adapt and improve their environment to meet their goals.

Jim Elliott and others who helped us along the way certainly exemplified these qualities, and in doing so made possible a truly joyous experience for the three of us. Diving is a wonderful sport and I can see why so many people we have met on this journey have made it a big part of their lives. Their generosity has been an inspiration for me to seek to create such experiences for others.

Kerry is a 60 year-old retired journalist, who became injured in 1974 on her way to an assignment in Vietnam. A Vietnam Vet she was interviewing in Hawaii suffered a flashback, thought he was encountering a Vietcong and attempted to strangle her. Being a stubborn sort, she recovered, but is now disabled. Stumbling on SALM in 1991, she underwent a true sea-change and became a sailor/racer. She is now head-over-ankle-weights in love with diving.

Jordanna is a 26 year-old graduate of the University of Miami. She majored in Environmental Planning and Political Science. She has also attended Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario in the Outdoor Ecological and Experiential Education program. She is a former NCAA rower and coach. A nature lover, she is very concerned about humanity and her place in it. She is a wonderful, funny, caring, intelligent friend.